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2.3: Grassroots Movement
The third session of The Brazen Helm. Played in February 2017. The Party * Eadmund, Human Magus * Sheng Háldott, Human Inquisitor * Wilhelm Widalis, Gnome Somaturge Journal The Baker Incident 18th of Oak Moon, 1985 – Red Dragonfly Inn, Dewport, Ceraris In the days following their resolution of the Stagpole/Doewell Incident, all three of the Knights put their practical experience to use and make some good progress in their respective fields of magic. Wilhelm in particular wanders into the woods to have his golem fell a hearty oak that he uses as materials for a new, improved, wooden golem. Eadmund is saddened, having wanted to plant some flowers in the dirt one. They design a little ”grave” in the backyard and plant the seeds there instead. One morning their routines at the Red Dragonfly are interrupted by a panicked, middle-aged couple rushing inside. They introduce themselves as Percy and Maria Baker and say that their son has disappeared. Eadmund: ”You wouldn't happen to actually be bakers by trade, would you?” Percy: ”Yes we would, but how is that important?!” Apparently the Bakers heard a crash from their basement this morning and went down to see that a strange tunnel had suddenly appeared in the wall. Even worse, their 11-year-old son Daniel was nowhere to be found, so they believe he's somehow ended up inside the tunnel, perhaps taken by someone or something. They live very close by, so they ran over as quickly as they could. This sounds awfully familiar to Eadmund, who quickly fetches a binder of notes from his room. He says the tunnel is probably part of the Wormway, a mysterious and supernatural cavern complex below the city. It's not usually this threatening; the locals even use it as a sewer. He and the Bakers leave right away, but as Wilhelm is about to follow them astride his golem, he notices that Sheng has been oddly quiet. Sheng is leaning against a wall and snoozing with his face covered by a newspaper. Wilhelm has the golem press its wooden hand against Sheng's face. He wakes up just in time to avoid being picked up and carried over the shoulder. Wilhelm explains that they have a job to do and they start running as well. The Bakers' basement seems like a perfectly normal storage room, but one of the cupboards has been knocked over, revealing a hole in the stone wall, about four feet across, concealed by loose vines. The inside of the tunnel is dark, as expected, but seems to widen somewhat and be covered in even more plant life. A quick Detect Magic reveals that the tunnel has a faint magical aura, like background radiation, with traces of at least abjuration, illusion and transmutation. It's rather typical of, say, the Wormway or the Underdark. Sheng has heard mentions of the tunnels around town, but nothing about them causing trouble like this. Percy: ”Should we get the Guard or something?” Sheng: ”Yes, in fact, you should ask for Captain Colton and say that the Brasshelms are on the case. Lock up the basement until our return.” Eadmund takes a blank piece of paper and scribbles a brief message onto it: ”Gone to investigate the Wormway, will report findings. -Eadmund” and asks the Bakers to deliver it to the Blaise household in the Castle Quarter. Sheng: ”'Report'? Who exactly are you working for?” Eadmund: ”Not for, with. There's this person who's staying in Dewport specifically to research the Wormway. He's sure to be interested.” With that, they crawl into the tunnel. Dewport Underground The tunnel expands enough for everyone to walk through while hunched over. Eadmund casts Light on his sword and Sheng on the golem. The overgrown walls seem smooth and regular enough to be man-made, yet the passage twists and turns in every direction, even up and down, seemingly at random. The only distinct impression the Knights get is that they're headed deeper and deeper into the earth. After several minutes of walking, they come to another vine-covered hole that seems to open up into a larger chamber. The others hang back while Sheng casts Invisibility on himself and crouches through the vines. The plants covering every solid surface of the eerily quiet room are speckled with little dots of light that reveal the outline of a tall room that seems to continue behind a nearby corner. Here and there are some strangely bundled vines running from floor to ceiling, looking almost like solid pillars. As Sheng turns his head, he finally lays his eyes on an adult human corpse, pinned against the wall right next to him and covered in vines. Sheng whispers to the others in the tunnel: ”There's a corpse over here, but at least it isn't Daniel.” Just as he speaks those words, the dead man springs to life and tries to lash out at the source of the sound, only to be held in place by the vines. Sheng lets out a distinctly ”I freaking knew it” sort of sigh and scans the ”zombie”, only to find that it is neither undead nor magical. On a second look, some of those vines are actually growing through and from its body. He realizes that it's actually the spawn of a yellow musk creeper, a rare and dangerous plant that feeds on the brain matter of its helpless victims and implants them with its seed, making them shamble around for a while before falling inert and providing fertilizer for a whole new creeper to grow. Sheng, still invisible, relays this information and proceeds further into the room, but doesn't actually have anything to see with. He picks up a pebble and casts Light on it, prompting something in the darkness to fling a thorn-like spear at the seemingly floating glow. Sheng tosses the stone right back, hiding his position once more and illuminating what looks like man-shaped creature covered in bark and moss, with a new spear already growing in its hand. It's standing at the back of a passage between two 20-foot-tall ledges, one of which has a ramp leading up to it. Just as he steps on the ramp, however, Sheng notices that some of the vines on it are moving in response to his approach. After casting Expeditious Retreat, he manages to hop over and between the tendrils grabbing at his legs and reaches a safe vantage point at the top of the ledge. Eadmund: ”Sheng? Are you alright? Sheeeeng!?” Already on edge ever since entering the Wormway, hearing no response from Sheng after seeing the spear fly by has convinced Eadmund that he must be in great trouble, or worse. He barges into the room, casts Frostbite on his scimitar and charges towards the strange mossman. Wilhelm actually recognizes it as a ”gladeling”, a breed of fey. He's had some... bad experiences with fey in the past, and the realization makes him angry and afraid at the same time – angfraid, in his own words. It also distracts him enough that he almost stumbles right into the touchy tendrils (which he recognizes as an assassin vine) and the golem has to jump in to bail him out. The Knights now see all three gladelings in the room: two at the back and one on the second ledge. Eadmund runs up to the former two and blasts them with a spout of Burning Hands, lighting a good chunk of the room on fire. One manages to duck behind a vine-pillar and twirl around it, leaping at Eadmund with its spear right about to meet his face... Sheng, who is overlooking the situation from above, shouts out a warning. Eadmund turns around in confusion, just in time for the spear to sail past his head. Sheng can only face-palm as this allows the other gladeling to stab Eadmund in the side instead. Eadmund casts Mirror Image, making a grand total of five illusionary copies jump out and thus conceal his actual position, and puts down the gladelings with a few more slashes as their attacks hit nothing but air. The remaining gladeling on the ledge is trying to grab Wilhelm with some sort of vine-whip, but Sheng's still determined to stay hidden. Instead of simply shooting the damn thing, he jumps around and pokes at the gladeling to leave it swiping furiously at empty air, cursing in Sylvan, while he hops down and starts putting out Eadmund's little fire with repeated castings of Create Water. After running out of targets for Clinging Earth, Wilhelm starts taking potshots with his crossbow instead. He and his golem finally manage to tear the assassin vine to pieces, clearing the path for Eadmund and the golem to get on the ledge and finish off the gladeling. It actually lands a seemingly fatal headshot on Eadmund, but as the illusion fades, its little grin drops, followed shortly by its head as the real Eadmund cuts it off. Sheng's Invisibility finally ends, making Eadmund rush over and give him a very awkward, almost tearful hug of relief. Wilhelm's golem is in bad enough shape that he's actually forced to reconstruct it, using some of the surrounding flora as spare parts. Sheng digs through the gladelings' corpses and finds some toothpick-sized thorns, which he deduces to be the strange spears they'd used. Apparently they were just carried in miniature form. Before carrying on, they heal Eadmund and wonder what to do with the seed-zombie by the entrance. They ultimately settle for the simple but effective approach of cutting off its head before having the golem dig out the acorn-sized seed and crush it in its hands. Seedy Business After only a short stretch of tunnel the Knights find themselves in a tall, cylindrical room. Water trickles in through the walls and flows into a filthy pool at the bottom. There are three platforms on opposite sides of the room, each with another tunnel entrance, and they're standing on the tallest one, about 40 feet above the water's surface. Firm but uneven and slippery vine-pillars form sloped walkways between the platforms. Eadmund decides to go first but moves a bit too carelessly and plunges into the water below, resurfacing unharmed and starting to swim towards the lowest platform. Based on the smell, the talk about sewers seems to be true. Sheng goes next, handling the bridge just fine and even dodging a spear thrown by a gladeling that emerged from hiding on the lowest platform. It probably would've hit at Eadmund if he hadn't already fallen on his own. Sheng makes his way to the middle platform and shoots two arrows at the gladeling, only to miss with both. The buoyant golem jumps into the water to reach the fight as fast as possible, but the gladeling decides to run while it can and disappears into the tunnel behind it. The Knights want to check out the tunnel on the middle platform before heading any deeper, just to be thorough. It turns out quite similar to the one connected to the Bakers' basement, winding around and around for several minutes until Eadmund finally sticks his head out from under a bush in some Dewporter's back yard. After briefly considering the possibility of Daniel's kidnappers hiding in the nearby house, the Knights decide that this is just another exit and hurry back underground. They know to expect an ambush in the lowest tunnel, and aren't very eager to walk right into it. Instead, they have the surprisingly bright idea of Sheng casting Invisibility on Wilhelm's golem and him using Golem's Eyes to send it in as an expendable scout. The golem walks into the tunnel and sees another long room with a zombie and two gladelings skulking behind pillars at the back, overlooking a small chasm that cuts the room in half. The golem walks into a small side passage and a zombie shambles right by it, towards the party. The passage takes the golem past another exit tunnel – guarded by a large violet fungus – and up behind the gladelings, bypassing the chasm. Wilhelm briefly returns to his body to report all this to the others. Sheng quickly ducks into the room to shoot the zombie before it can reach them. As he lands a fatal shot, however, the zombie's body puffs out a cloud of spores that take a moment to disperse. At least they'll know to avoid that in the future. The golem continues on its merry way, walking right past the unwitting gladelings and into the tunnel behind them. At the end of the winding passage it finally finds a circular chamber with a huge tower of vines in the middle of it, covered in bright-yellow flowers. This must be the yellow musk creeper. There's another zombie shambling around... and at the back of the room are five more unconscious people, bound to the wall by vines. Daniel is second from the right, but a hungry-looking tendril is already headed for the brain of the leftmost captive. Wilhelm has the golem charge at the massive creeper, losing its invisibility, and leaves it to fend for itself while moving back into his own body. Wilhelm: ”There are people back there about to get seeded, we better hurry!” The Root of the Problem Abandoning any further trickery, the Knights opt for a shock-and-awe approach and begin a frantic rush through the ambush room. Sheng blows up the zombie and Eadmund simply leaps across the chasm, evading a spear in midair and engaging in an intense melee with the two gladelings. Wilhelm, meanwhile, fails to do the same and stumbles into the pit. The good news: it's only about 15 feet deep. The bad news: there's a zombie waiting for him down there. He bashes it upside the head with his crossbow and Sheng finishes it off with an arrow, giving Wilhelm a face full of spores. A stuffy stench and prickling sensation assault his sinuses, but he seems to avoid the worst of it, and is helped up by Sheng. As if making a glorious last stand, the last gladeling takes several seemingly lethal wounds and fights back with great ferocity until Eadmund finally chops its head off. The Knights made sure to stomp on the zombie-seeds as they passed by, so they press on after just giving Eadmund a quick poke of the ol' medicine stick. His scrapes are starting to add up, but they have no time to wait for the spell to do its magic. Eadmund is the first to reach the final room and see the golem tangled up in the creeper, tearing at the vines trying to wrap around it. In the back, another person has been zombified and four captives remain. Eadmund casts Bladed Dash, leaving behind only a faint blur as he charges across the air, buries his sword in the creeper and makes a long slash on his way down. He casts his custom Flamebite and just starts tearing into it, even as the damaged parts try to regenerate but simply can't keep up. If plants could scream, the creeper definitely would, based on the way its vines are whipping around the room. Even while taking some blows from the vines himself, Sheng notices that another narrow tendril is headed for the next captive in line. He fires an arrow at the tendril, but it almost seems to dodge the projectile, and buries itself in the victim's skull. Sheng grits his teeth and dashes past the creeper, deftly rolling to evade another vine, and successfully severs the tendril with his dagger. To his relief, the victim seems to still be alive. The yellow musk creeper lashes out wildly and uses its flowers to spew more spores at the Knights, but is hopelessly outmatched, and soon goes down in a smoldering pile. After the remaining two zombies are handily destroyed, it seems that the cavern is clear and the four unconscious captives safe. The Knights yank out the tendril from the close call's skull and search through the remains of the creeper to make sure that no fertile seeds remain.__FORCETOC__ Category:Lorelm Category:Kampanjat Category:Content Category:English